


Looking In

by BitchyMuggle



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Coming of Age, Cuddling, Drama, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Family Drama, Family Secrets, First Time Sex, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Grieving, Growing Up Together, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, I write my story like I want, Living Together, Long Haired Sakura (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), Love, Modern AU, No Karin Bashing, Puberty, Redemption, Referenced Death, Revenge, Sadness, Sakura is an orphan AU, Sasuke and Sakura start off as friends, Sasuke is a closeted cuddler lmfao, Scenes of violence, Too many characters, Trauma, Violence, angsty sasuke, awkwardness of puberty, but he'll also have his sweet moments, cos I said so, cos there might be drama but tons of fluff in the future, don't worry they'll be old enough for when the smut stuff happens, he's keeping it secret, help him Sakura, like almost twice their ages now lmao, like will take forever to finish kind of fic, long fic, poor kid needs social skills, sex will take a long time to come, socially awkward sauce, supporting each other, they will need to grow up for that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-13 19:32:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11766849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitchyMuggle/pseuds/BitchyMuggle
Summary: Sometimes hope is such a shallow fragile thing that seems almost selfish in a way.Ever since she had been a little girl, Sakura had been intrigued by Sasuke, the quiet aloof boy in her class. As an adult, she can only love him and hold on to hope as fragile as it seems.





	1. Chapter 1

Sakura didn’t even know where to begin when it came to Sasuke. He had been a silent classmate that usually sat separated from the rest of the class as if he feared being tainted by them if he interacted with them more than he had to.

The first time she saw him he hadn’t been that withdrawn. Unapproachable, yes, but broken and detached to the point that he was more like a ghost than another child in their usually noisy class? No. He had become that way due to his changed circumstances. 

No differently from her in a way except she hid the pain of her loss behind a smile. 

He had been so fragile looking to her back then.  Pale, small and with a pretty face that reminded her of one of her mother’s porcelain dolls. His eyes were what attracted her most. They were almond shaped and a sharp fathomless black. She wasn’t sure if they were as black as she assumed since she hadn’t gotten physically close to him to see if they were just a dark brown in those days.

But his eyes were pretty. It felt silly of her not coming up with another way to describe them but she had only been a little girl at the time. A little girl admiring an unusually pretty boy with blue tinged black hair that spiked at the back of his head while longish locks framed his pale expressionless face.

She didn’t remember if he had _truly_ looked at her once back then. If the rare moments their eyes had met before they had finally talked to each other were remembered by him or merely accidental. Or if he ever caught her just looking at him from the corner of her eye. If he had known she would have probably run off in a panic because the last thing she wanted was for the boy she hadn’t talked to even once during third grade finding her admiring him in his silence when  he kept himself intentionally separated from the other kids.

Who could have prepared her for the future in those days? There had been many things she hadn’t known and now years later she felt stupid for not realizing these things earlier so she could put them to a stop once she was too deep in and consumed by everything that was Sasuke.

Revenge. Hate. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was all he ever talked about as she would stare at him quietly feeling her chest tighten in pain at seeing him completely losing himself to it. He'd get an intense look in his black eyes and his voice would harden every time. She knew he was doing it for both of them, but at what cost?

The pale disinterested boy that smirked to himself was the first to go, then the next to disappear was the saddened one that didn’t have any expression and mostly kept those dark eyes she liked looking at so much downcast as if he didn’t want people to see too much of him and now…

He was hateful. Unrecognizable. Her Sasuke was _gone_.

When she had confronted him about it he had coldly told her that _he_ had died a long time ago. Before he had ever allowed her to get close. He reminded her that she had known of his plans and that she had supported him like a ‘good friend’ should.

The word 'friend’ was more like a mockery from him. He never defined what they were to each other. Sakura knew that she was the only girl he’d allowed close to him. They were each other’s everything and he’d been there for her when she’d been all alone just as he had been.

 _“Are you going to turn you're back on me now when you're this far in?”_ his cold question still managed to make her blanche to this day as she waited for him like she always did in his apartment, or should she say _their_ apartment.

He made it sound as if he didn't care if she left him alone to destroy himself. 

She wasn’t going to cry. What was the point of it anymore? He’d just walk into their apartment after going into the city looking for trails to track and would give her one of his unreadable stares before dismissing her puffy eyes and reddened nose.

Then he’d be gentler with her. His voice would soften but he wouldn’t pry into what was bothering her. He’d just be a _nice_ Sasuke that only made her want to scream at him to stop pretending to be the boy she once knew.

He was 'nice’ but he never once asked her why she was upset and Sakura knew it was mostly because if she told him he’d get that _look_ on his face.

That look of him widening his eyes and clenching his jaw before he’d walk away without uttering a single word and going over to their room.

She sometimes wished he had an outburst and slammed some doors to show that he felt _anything_ , but Sasuke was quiet. He would always leave the door open and a spot on the bed beside him for when she was ready to turn in for the night regardless of anything that had been upsetting during the day.

It was a silent considerate understanding that drove her crazy. Sometimes it looked as if he wanted her to hate him and give up on him and yet… He’d do small details like that.

He wasn’t one that talked about his feelings or told her how he truly felt. He would tell her hints in the past but now Sasuke repressed his thoughts and pretended those feelings weren’t there because he was focusing his _all_ into killing those who had hurt them as children.

 _Friend_.

That’s what he called her. That’s _all_ he called her. Despite being lovers and living together, despite being broken in similar ways, he still called her a _friend_.

_Why do you still stay…?_

Lying next to him each night she’d hear that question whispered in her mind. She wasn’t being held captive by him. He had never hurt her. She had _chosen_ to stay even though Sasuke had chased everyone away from him and had attempted to do the same with her.

But it had been _her_ choice and the answer why was because she knew Sasuke, the _real_ one, was still there behind his cold expression. She still saw small glimpses of him under that unfeeling facade he’d taken once he had found out the truth behind all their tragedy… The small smiles he allowed himself to have, the affectionate looks. The Sasuke she loved was _still_ there waiting to be freed of their burden. 

And she couldn’t stop loving him and holding on to hope that she'd get him back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just warning that even tho this is mainly an SS fic, there will be other pairings which will be added later tho the most notable one will be ItaKarin since both those characters will play an important role in the plot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tons of stuff in this chapter. Child Sakura, child Sasuke, practically child rookies. Scenes of previous violence, blood, poor Sakura (;o;), loss, a funny bit, SakuIno friendship/sisterhood (literally), the start of Naruto and Sasuke friendship, immature kids attempting adult humor, trauma, an OC 'auntie', Iruka getting grey hairs from Naruto related stress, longest chapter written in all my freaking life. Massacre, slaying. Sasuke and Sakura making a connection.
> 
> Imagine the "child" chapters as if the adult versions of the characters were retelling their story to you.

_Sakura, age 6_

 

Living in a happy home sometimes could be too sheltering. Things are hidden or easily overlooked because something even greater would overcome it and erase it all away. In a happy home, grief didn't last forever when surrounded by the warmth of family. Your family were your _protectors_ , the ones that always made certain you lacked nothing. 

_Your family was home._

Sakura was only six years old when her innocent world was shattered by the gruesomeness of the world that her parents had hid from her. She had been ignorant of the sight of too much blood and carnage. Her mother had, in a sense, _protected_ her too much from things that would scar her young mind. 

Violent television shows, the front pages of newspapers, or 'adult talk' that would be too explicit for a child to truly comprehend. 

Her mother had been a good woman. Loud, sometimes brash, but a good loving woman nonetheless. Sometimes... Sakura wished she hadn't been protected to that extent so when the time came for her world to come tumbling down, she would have been better prepared. She didn't resent her mother for the overprotection, but she still wondered if the pain of losing her would have been less when _it_  had happened. 

Sakura doubted it would hurt less. It was just wishful thinking she already knew was unrealistic. 

Her father had been a retired police officer. At a young age she had barely known anything about his previous line of work. Only that he had sustained an injury that took him out of the force and kept him home. He had been jovial and always in their home's study. He had a part time job with the police despite his forced removal from the job itself. All he did was keep up some databases and look up information, or so her mother had said. 

There had been so many things she hadn't known back then. Her mother was the manager at an outlet store, her father was always home in the computer, and Sakura was an only child. Her life before it all was destroyed, had been blissfully normal and uninteresting. She had been ignorant of pain and hardships. 

Nothing in her home life or regarding her parents could have predicted it. 

She would spend years asking herself later. _Why them? Why us? Why?!_

Her friend Ino had lived across the street back in those days. It wasn't uncommon for Sakura to spend the night even on weekdays over at her house and leave together for school in the mornings. Sometimes it'd be Ino that stayed in her house. 

Perhaps it had been a twist of fate or intentionally done, but on the night the Haruno couple had been slaughtered, Sakura had been doing her routine unexpected slumber party with Ino who had a bunk bed. It still horrifies her that for a moment they _both_ had considered staying in her own house instead that night. If that had happened then her and Ino would have been...

She hated to think about what could have happened. If they had been there, there would have been _four_ bloodied bodies instead of two. Sakura doubted that the ending outcome of there being _more_ people in her house would have changed. No matter how much she thought up different scenarios she kept concluding things would have ended up in death. 

Death, blood, and dismemberment by someone or some _thing_ because what Sakura had seen couldn't possibly have been done by a human. 

Inoichi, Ino's father, had been the one that had helped her cross the street on the morning of the discovery. Sometimes it was Ino's mother, Noriko who helped them cross, but on that fateful day, it had been Inoichi who had held her small hand in his along with Ino to cross the street to her house. It wasn't odd for Ino's father to take them both over this way to make certain no speeding cars were passing by to hurt them in their crossing. 

It would have been like any normal day. It _should_ have been normal but it wasn't when Sakura first stepped through the front door of her modest two story family home with Inoichi saying something about talking to her father as he walked behind her still holding Ino's hand. 

The silence should have been the first warning that something was incredibly wrong. The Haruno household was a loud one, even in the mornings, with music blaring from the kitchen as her mother cooked breakfast and her father talked on the phone from his study in that voice of his that always seemed to be spoken in exclamations. 

Sakura had frozen in the open doorway in the silence that had greeted them. It was her lack of movement that made Inoichi cut off his own rambling words and had Ino whimper from beside him. They were both standing behind Sakura, but Inoichi being a tall adult could see well above her short body. 

The small hallway leading from the study close to the front door had a trail of blood. No, it couldn't be described as a simple trail at all. It was more like a dry thick track of rusty red that was dragged from that small room, through the hallway and up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Anyone could have seen it when first walking in due to the stairs being in the house's entry room. 

Sakura's eyes followed that gruesome path, seeing how that rusted dry red stained the beige colored carpet of the stairs. It was a path that lead somewhere and the place it guided to surely had more horrors to show. She didn't even feel Inoichi's hand on her small shoulder and or hear his words telling her to step away so he could call the police. 

All her eyes could see was red in that otherwise silent house before she suddenly yanked her shoulder away from Inoichi's grasp and heard Ino's shouting her name as she followed the bloody tracks upstairs. 

Sakura would _never_ forget that day. How her short legs had moved so fast that Inoichi tripped after her to stop her from going upstairs, and her small feet had stepped on that exact gory path of brownish red. It was only when the path ended at her parents' bedroom that Sakura had finally stilled. 

She couldn't breathe. She had forgotten how at the sight that greeted her on her parents' bed. Her had chest tightened and locked her breath inside as her eyes widened in horror. 

What was on the bed didn't even resemble humans. She couldn't even tell ber parents apart. They were a tangle of broken hacked up limbs piled up on the bed, just muscle and exposed bone and so much congealed blood it looked black. The only thing she had recognized was her father's pale pink hair, a duller pink than her bright one, among all the gore.

That was when she had screamed. It could have been a glance that lasted only scant seconds, or an eternity, but in that short time that image had been permanently set into her young mind forever. She doubted there would _anything_ in the world that could erase what she had seen or make her forget the disgusting overwhelming smell of blood and cut up intestines in that room. 

She hadn't cried. Tears didn't come out, but the _scream_ was loud and soon muffled by Inoichi who grabbed her and pulled her to his chest. She continued screaming even then. Her mind couldn't process at all that her eyes had seen. It all had appeared so unreal, like it were happening to someone else. 

A meek voice that could only be Ino from far away downstairs spoke, "Dad-!"

"Stay down there, Ino! Shout for your mother to call Shikaku! He needs to bring some of the boys here quick!"

Sakura couldn't struggle in the strong arms that pulled her up from the floor. Inoichi was carrying her quickly away from her parents' room while making certain she couldn't look back at the scene. It was a considerate gesture even though the damage had already been done. 

Going into psychological shock was a strange thing. Many different reactions could happen. You can block out many things happening or hyper focus your attention too much on insignificant details as your mind tries to catch up or take a break from something traumatic. You might not even feel physical pain when in shock or your breathing could become physically painful from panting. 

With Sakura she had been numbed. Unresponsive and ignoring the rest of the world while her mind only picked up minor details that she couldn't even start to decipher. People talking was like a foreign language, common sounds were not recognized. Her thinking processes had appeared to have stopped during those moments. 

She had stopped screaming but there still were no tears when she was taken outside to the sudden brightness of the morning sun shining on her house's front yard. She didn't feel when Noriko took her from Inoichi to hold her close while quickly handing him a cellphone to talk to the police. 

Ino had gently grabbed her hand as Noriko rubbed her back, hadn't she? Sakura was shut off to the world for an eternity that only lasted a couple of minutes in of her short life. 

She heard them talking. Their voices were in mumbles to her. She was sure they were _talking_ to her. 

Time moved too slow and yet strangely at the same time, _too_ fast. Her shutting off in that manner made her not notice when she was taken inside the Yamanaka household and left alone with a quiet Ino as the Yamanaka couple spoke in hushed voices from the doorway of their living room. 

Ino hadn't left her side. She didn't know what had been found, yet she remained next to Sakura quietly holding her hand as they both sat on one of the many couches in the sizeable living room. Sakura may have closed herself off but she needed that small comfort and Ino instinctively was giving it. 

The sounds of sirens will always be a sound she would hate. She didn't react adversely when hearing them that day but that loud repetitive noise of multiple police cars pulling up was what helped her slowly come to. 

Inoichi did most of the talking or so she assumed. She couldn't see him anymore once he went outside to explain what was found in her house to the police that had arrived with that ear splitting racket. 

Noriko tried to keep things normal while with her and Ino. Putting in a movie in the DVD player to not put on the news that probably had already gotten wind of the event, and bringing a plate of cookies to set on the coffee table that Sakura couldn't bring herself to eat. 

When the sirens had stopped, the movie Noriko had put to play, Sakura vaguely remembered it as some adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, served as background noise that blocked out the distant talking across the street and the sounds of police radios going on and off. It didn't help her forget but the fact that Noriko tried to protect her from the going-ons outside had been a wise decision for the time being. 

Denial. Sakura was in _denial_ of what she'd seen or she had somehow suppressed her shock of it. The truth was still there in the front of her mind yet she saw it as something abstract and not related to her. 

She only became responsive when shouts started coming from outside. The movie was over and she hadn't even watched it while Ino had accompanied her. All she had done was stare blankly at the screen. 

But this shouting snapped her out of it. Perhaps it was the surprise of hearing a new voice. 

"You two and your _standard procedures_ are not setting one foot inside that house or getting near that child!" the sharp outraged female shout had Ino straightening in attention on the couch. 

"Auntie Himari," Ino breathed as Sakura gave her a questioning glance from the corner of her eyes. 

A nervous male voice tried to speak to the angered female in a calming manner, "Please forgive us, ma'am, but standard procedures dictate that Haruno Sakura is to be under protective custody and psychological evaluation-"

" _Fuck_ your standard procedures!" something loud made a slapping sound. Like a packet of papers hitting a hard surface. 

"The Harunos contacted me four months ago. With their signatures and me as legal witness of the Yamanakas, the Harunos gave the Yamanakas all parental rights if something were to happen to them and the minor had no one else to turn to!"

"Excuse me, but-!"

"Read those documents before arguing with me, _asshole_. It was taken and approved in court. Instead of your _staaandard proceeedure_ of taking this child to an orphanage, the Yamanakas are the  _legal_ guardians of Haruno Sakura. In other words she's their legal daughter and by extension _my_ client!"

"This is highly irregular, Yamanaka-san, please explain to me why this woman is making such claims!"

"I called her," Inoichi said calmly as Sakura sat there next to Ino in disbelief while overhearing the loud conversation from outside. "She's a licensed attorney with her own law firm, despite her loud demeanor."

"Shut up," the lowly muttered words from "Himari" were barely heard before a serenely composed Noriko walked into the living room, smoothing down her brown hair into her usual bun. 

Whatever more words were exchanged just outside the front door of the Yamanaka residence were spoken in hushed tones. 

"Ino, see if you can find some clothes for Sakura-chan for when she takes a bath later. I'll go prepare lunch. You two girls must be positively _famished_ ," the calmness with which she had spoken had Ino gaping at her as the older woman walked to the back of the house through the living room as if nothing had transpired. 

That was when it finally hit Sakura how things had drastically changed.  

*****

The Yamanakas were a good family. Loving. But they weren't the Harunos. Sakura felt like an invader in their perfectly ordered lives even though through her friendship with Ino, she was used to the couple and Ino's sometimes laughable maternal fussing over her. 

It was a _borrowed_ family. No matter how hard they tried, that fact remained and it hurt. 

On the very first day of being a legal member of the Yamanaka house, she had found out Noriko had been an orphan. It was a surprise revelation since the regal composed woman almost had an aristocratic air which made it difficult to imagine that she had grown up in the system ever since she could remember alongside Satou Himari, who was now a successful attorney. 

Maybe due to her young age at the time, Sakura hadn't questioned things enough in those early days. She hadn't read too much into _why_ her parents had contacted someone to make certain her future was safe. All she knew was that she had a family, although a not blood related one. If she had thought to ask at that time, she probably would have come to realize that early on that her parents _had known_ they could possibly leave her alone someday. 

That they possibly even knew who their killer was and had expected it to happen. But these thoughts hadn't come to her mind. Not with the still fresh images of death in her thoughts, the absence of her parents and suddenly moving into her childhood friend's house. 

Her parents' funeral was originally planned as a small private affair, yet Sakura had been overwhelmed by how many strangers had assisted. All the stares she had received when she had to stand in front of the funeral home staff in her brand new black dress to be handed two small and still warm boxes of ashes had left her feeling cold and awkward. In that moment with all that unwanted attention, holding what was left of her parents, little Sakura had almost finally publicly broke. 

But she forced herself to appear calm through it. It wasn't apathy. It was more like a way to hold herself together in front of so many people. Her parents ashes were later given an honorary spot within the Yamanaka home. They had their own altar and pictures to accompany their boxes and Noriko had explained to her gently how to do remembrance and pray to her parents. She was grateful for the woman and her gentle way of speaking to her when they both did the first prayer. 

Sakura prayed for Haruno Kisashi and Mebuki every day. 

Noriko had made arrangements to bring all her things to Yamanaka house once all evidence had been gathered from the Haruno house. Space was made among Ino's things for her own things and soon Ino's room with its bunk bed was a clash of colors that showed two girls shared the same bedroom. 

The one bedroom window facing out to the street that showed her old house was kept with its blinds down as if the image of the house surrounded by yellow police tape could set her off. Or the Yamanakas lowered the blinds at all times to prevent her from seeing reporters trying to break into the empty home to get gruesome pictures of the crime scene for a paycheck. 

The first couple of days were surreal. Despite the Yamanakas' insistence against her being questioned, Sakura was taken to the hospital to be psychologically evaluated due to what she'd seen. 

To anyone she'd look like a quiet child with rare smiles that would appear. They were forced smiles that hurt her face because Sakura knew that if she pretended, adults around her wouldn't bother her as much. 

_"Poor child."_

_"She's all alone!"_

_"Her family... So tragic..."_

Those were the kind of things she'd overhear when adults thought she couldn't hear them. It drove her nuts. People would think sympathy would be something sweet, something _considerate_ , yet for Sakura it only made her feel pitiful and like people acted _differently_ around her because of what had happened. 

It took practice to pretend she was 'normal' and the doctors saw it as a 'problem' with how she handled grief. They expected her to have a mental break. To not understand what had happened. 

" _Repression_."

Even in her six year old mind she thought of a few 'adult' choice words her father had let slip out around her before her mother slapped him on the shoulder with a sharp glare. 

The word "pissed" would come up in her thoughts but she wouldn't utter it. She would sit on that soft couch in front of the doctor in his cold little office as he stared at her apathetically while asking questions and persistently writing things down. Writing things down like _trauma, delusion, grief coping, denial._

Sakura _knew_ what had happened. That she couldn't cross the street back to her house again because her parents were no longer there. That they had died but... It was as if her mind had disconnected from it when it came to _other_ people. Whenever asked about it she would shut the question out and would become too quiet as that doctor continued his annoying scribbling sounds on the little notebook he had lazily put on his lap. 

She _hated_ going to the doctor. She _hated_ being asked. She especially hated the sympathetic looks she got from people who didn't even _know_ her before the incident. 

Because it was like a constant reminder of the truth she already knew. 

She knew they were dead! She knew they weren't coming back! That she would never see them again! _That pen sound on paper is so annoying!_

They scheduled her for therapy once a week. There was no escaping it. Her way of coping with it was alarming to the doctor somehow and no matter how she falsely smiled and tried to act like before, some people could _still_ see through the cracks of her mask. 

Especially Ino. Her friend knew the _real_ her. She never brought the fake act up but late at night whenever Sakura slept up in the upward bunk bed, she would crawl up there to sleep in squeezed in next to her. It was a silent comfort that needed no words being said. During the day Ino would be normal, _loud_ , but in those moments Ino showed some acknowledgement that Sakura needed someone just to quietly _be there._

In some way, the Haruno massacre had affected many other people other than herself. They acted differently and were more careful in the small town of Konoha. Crimes rarely happened there and people were frightened that they could be next. Things like _massacres_ were events people would expect in large cities but not a small town like theirs. 

If only they didn't keep reminding her about it with their attitude towards her. Even though Noriko and Inoichi tried to keep her from seeing too much, no differently than her mother Mebuki had done when alive, going back to school had a sobering effect on her. 

The other kids acted more subdued and their teachers, even the ones from other classrooms, would look at her silently before murmuring lowly to each other. 

Very few kids treated her normally. She had overheard her doctor tell Noriko and Inoichi that the best way to deal with her kind of trauma was to behave normally around her. 

Unfortunately that little tidbit wasn't _common_  knowledge. 

Only a handful of kids didn't behave like they were walking on eggshells around her. One was the loud troublemaker of their class, Uzumaki Naruto. Sakura never had paid him much attention, not many people did, but on the very first day she had returned to class after the incident that was now called the _Haruno Slaying_ on the local newspapers, he had made her finally notice him. It had been when he had almost ran into her in the halls while escaping Iruka-sensei's yelling coming from behind him. 

He had suddenly stopped seeing her just in the nick of time and stared at her, before scratching the back of his head in embarrassment and saying, "Hey, Sakura-chan!" 

Her eyes had widened at his cheerful greeting and before she could say anything, the small blond boy that probably had the stamina of an army of hamsters, sped off yelling another loud, "See ya' tomorrow, Sakura-chan!"

"Yeah, right, he's coming back tomorrow! He's getting back in that classroom _today_!" Iruka's annoyed grumbling was what she heard as the already breathless professor went past her and continued going after Naruto that had probably successfully escaped the school building. 

Other kids, like Nara Shikamaru, had greeted her naturally. She knew his father Shikaku had been the first police officer in her house, but if he thought it odd, he didn't show it. He had merely lifted his head from a small shallow puddle of drool on his desk from his nap, and gave her his usual nod when she had first entered their classroom. 

Chouji had offered her some chips and when she refused he shrugged and stuffed his mouth with the crushed chips as if they were quickly going out of style. 

She sat with them and Ino in the back of the class. It was the only way she could avoid having the back of her head stared at by the other children and Shikamaru, Chouji and Ino were the only ones who treated her like a _normal_ person. 

It was a good way to dull the pain of the loss. Her doctor might not see that much avoidance as a good thing but it helped her in its own way. 

*****

_Sakura, age 8_

On the day she first saw him, the tragedy of her family had still felt fresh even after two years. Uchiha Sasuke had been enrolled in their small school and introduced to their class as he stared solemnly and with a rather aloof indifference ahead of him as if the filled classroom were an empty one. 

He had been pale and with a delicate face framed by blue black hair. His dark eyes were sharp and noticeable even from her seat in the back of the room. 

"He's so _cute_!" Ino immediately gasped lowly, and soon girls in their classroom began murmuring all at once as Iruka-sensei had a strained smile on his lips since just bringing in the new boy caused an uproar. With the grading system in their school the poor man would be stuck with them until sixth grade and they weren't exactly a well behaved class. 

If all the attention bothered Sasuke, he hid it well. He looked almost bored by it. 

"Where am I supposed to sit?" he asked, his voice being flat showing his lack of interest. 

"He's so _cool_ too!" some unknown girl whispered loudly. 

"Girls are such a drag...," Shikamaru said tiredly before laying his head on his folded arms over his desk. "He's just a new kid..."

She didn't know if that was when her destiny would be intertwined with Sasuke. He hadn't even looked at her when he had quietly taken his seat in front of the class at the empty desk Iruka had pointed him too. There just had been _something_ about him that said that she would _know_ him. An unspoken message that connected them. 

Little had she had known at that time just _how_ their paths would permanently cross and just how important Sasuke would become to her. 

*****

_Sakura, three years after the tragedy_

Six months before her seventh birthday, the Yamanakas decided to move a house further down the block. Sakura suspected it was because of her seeing her empty old house across the street from their own home. They never said why but that was _one_ of her suspicions. 

The newer house was much bigger and she was given her own room with a shared bathroom with Ino. Though being in separate rooms didn't stop Ino from still crawling into Sakura's bed late at night. Noriko and Inoichi had reminded Ino that she had her own bed during dinner one evening and that was when Sakura heard a revelation that Ino reluctantly admitted to under the pressure of her parents. 

_"Sakura cries in her sleep."_

After that was said, the Yamanaka couple never brought the subject up again and Sakura was silent perhaps out of shame with how her grief manifested itself. Since the day of discovering her parents' dead bodies, at the funeral and during therapy, she hadn't once shed a tear. 

But in her sleep, she sobbed to herself and Ino had known and hadn't told her. 

 _I need to be more careful...,_ she told this to herself when she saw how much gentler Noriko and Inoichi behaved towards her. It was the exact opposite of what she wanted but she didn't have the heart to tell the couple to stop. 

Her parents' ashes followed her to this new house. She brought them with her just like the first time years ago. In the old Yamanaka house, the couple had insisted on putting her parents in the living room. Yet at the new house, the remains of the Harunos had their own private room with its altars with glossy pictures of what they had _once_ looked like. It was a comforting privacy. Sometimes whenever Sakura went to visit them she couldn't bear to see their smiling faces and would turn the pictures around to face the containers housing their ashes. 

She didn't want to admit to anyone that every time she saw a picture of her parents, she could barely see them as they had been alive. All she would remember was how they were found in pieces. 

That didn't mean she loved them any less. She would remember them every day. Nearly every morning she'd expect to hear her mom noisily opening her bedroom's curtains to let the sunlight in to shine directly on her face. 

 _"Wake up beauty sleep is over, young lady!"_ it would have sounded harsh, but her mother would have a playful little grin whenever doing that. 

Then her father... He used to walk at all times in the house just wearing a bathrobe with ridiculous long shorts underneath. It took a lot to convince him to wear ordinary clothes to go outside because even his outfits consisted of something garish. His shorts would have patterns like dragons and even anime characters printed on them. Sakura guessed he only had one neutral outfit in his half of the closet while her mother had a huge collection of dresses that didn't go past her knees. 

All those things were in a storage paid by her inheritance and Sakura had never visited the storage to go through all those things, through all those _memories_. She was too afraid to do it. 

She couldn't even look at their _pictures_. _What kind of daughter was she?_

Then her seventh birthday came and it was only with her, the Yamanakas and Himari while on her eighth birthday things were slightly different. Ino had wanted it to be huge but Inoichi had asked Sakura if _she_ wanted that. Her friend had sulked when Sakura said she only wanted close friends in that party. Shikamaru and Chouji and their families had been present. It was a small gathering but still a loud one with Ino yelling a Chouji for messily eating birthday cake with his bare hands. 

'Auntie Himari' came to visit regularly. At first Sakura had been intimidated by the loud woman with long blond streaked hair but as time passed, she quickly warmed up to her. Auntie Himari was like a big kid that spoiled both her and Ino since she said she couldn't have kids of her own and was far too busy to even take care of them even if she _could_ have them. 

Despite her personality being the exact opposite of Noriko's, Himari was another member of the family. She argued with Inoichi like he was her bratty brother and would spoil her 'adoptive daughters' outrageously while Noriko pinched the bridge of her nose with the stress over how many things were brought into the house. 

It was a good form of distraction to be dolled up as a princess and be taken to the movies every other weekend, yet even things like these couldn't ever fill the gap of her parents. Sometimes whenever Sakura had a genuine smile on her lips, she'd feel raked by guilt as if she were betraying their memory. Forced smiles were one thing, but real smiles hurt more than the fake ones when she realized she was temporarily happy without them. 

Time couldn't erase the pain but distraction helped time move more quickly. 

It had been shortly after her ninth birthday that she felt mentally prepared enough to ask Auntie Himari if she knew anymore of her parents' case. She knew she shouldn't have asked when the playful smirk on Himari's face disappeared. 

 _"I'm sorry, sweetie. These things take time...,"_ that response was a complete shut down. 

She was almost certain the adults knew _more_ but weren't telling her. She let the matter drop for awhile, just _waiting_ for the right time to bring it up again. It might have been pointless because they probably _still_ wouldn't tell her. 

She was too 'young'. Her mental wounds were too 'fresh'. It was all a disappointment. How adults would shelter children, even those who had already seen horrors. Would she have to wait more  _years_ for an answer? 

School life slowly got back to normal. And when she means normal, she really means that while people still whispered about her behind her back, they talked to her like they used to when they were at least around her. She had homework, friends, and there was no exaggerated special treatment. 

It was a relief. 

Sasuke, she had learned, was from a wealthy family. Ino wouldn't stop talking about him and even though Sakura had an interest herself on the boy, she didn't outwardly voice it, at least _not yet._

His family owned a pharmaceutical company and he was the youngest of two sons. Before he had been enrolled in their school, he had been tutored in a big traditional mansion she had only seen in magazines. It was said the place was so big and protected that it had to be built on the outskirts of Konoha. 

That might have explained his awkwardness around other children. Apparently his father had thought putting him in school would help him learn how to socialize, but the attempt was an obvious failure. 

Sasuke was withdrawn and ignored most of the children. He would sit at his desk in front of the class, silently taking notes while other kids would be disrupting the class as Iruka grinded his teeth in exasperation. 

Every day after class a sleek black car would pick up Sasuke in front of their school's doors. The first time it had happened all the kids had rushed outside to gawk at the glossy shine of the car as if they've never seen one before. Sakura didn't know a thing about car brands but she guessed it had to be expensive. 

 _"Man, that kid is lucky. He'll probably never have to work a day in his life with all that money,"_ Shikamaru had said boredly as they all watched that fancy car drive away on that first day. 

None of these things actually mattered to her. While the other girls fawned over him for his looks, his wealth and intelligence, Sakura was more like _intrigued_ by him. She supposed it could have been the start of a _crush_ when she sometimes would glance at him and their eyes would accidentally meet. 

_He has such pretty dark eyes._

The way her thoughts would wander would make her blush instantly and she would regret staring at him. She shouldn't even be _thinking_ about boys yet. Or so Auntie Himari had told her and Ino when her friend had showed her the unsmiling Sasuke in a class group picture. 

Ino and nearly every girl in class called Sasuke their 'future husband' while Sakura bit the inside of her cheek.

Sasuke's reluctance to make friends didn't keep him from quickly becoming popular in their school. He was smart, cool and had an elegance to his cold attitude that seemed to make people want to get close to him instead of repelling them. 

Unfortunately, Naruto, didn't take too kindly to that. The troublemaker that Iruka claimed was going to kill him with a heart attack some day, had made it his personal hobby to get Sasuke's attention, which was easier said than done. 

Naruto would punch the top of Sasuke's desk to get him to look up at him, would call him "teme" and "chicken butt", and would try to get him to do ridiculous things as a competition. 

All these things were of course sniffed at in disdain from Sasuke or looked at dismissively. 

Until one day Naruto finally got Sasuke to join him in a challenge. 

"What are you drawing, Naruto? A hotdog?" Chouji asked before chomping down on some chips that he appeared to have an endless supply of. 

Sakura was already used to this morning routine. Naruto always did something right before Iruka walked in and once he got yelled at, he would run away to skip class. Seeing Naruto standing on a small chair to draw high on the chalkboard in front of their classroom wasn't a new thing. 

"He does this everyday," she muttered as Ino rolled her eyes in agreement. 

"For your information, Chouji! It isn't a _hotdog_! Its a _dick_!" the collective gasp in the classroom gathered Naruto all the attention he needed. 

"Is that really what one looks like?" Ino leaned over her desk to whisper to Sakura next to her. 

"Your guess is as good as mine," the blush on Sakura's face could probably be seen from space. Naruto didn't hold back sometimes and today seemed like the day he'd go too far. 

"Does int ook ike one to mee," Choiji's near unintelligible cut words through his chewing made Naruto fume. Sakura was amazed steam didn't come out of his ears. 

"Hmph!" turning back to the board, Naruto wrote angrily in chicken scratch marks. His furious tapping on the board almost snapped the piece of chalk pinched between his fingers. 

"There!" Slamming his hand triumphantly on the board, Naruto's 'word' had been written under the awkward long shape with an arrow pointed to it. 

" _Dick_!" He looked smug when turning around to look at his audience with his arms crossed across his chest.  

"He didn't even spell the word 'dick' right," a boy named Shino calmly informed from behind his high collar. Even though the cloth muffled his words, everyone still heard and the classroom filled with laughter at Naruto's expense. 

Sakura made a mistake in that moment. She loudly snorted behind her hand. The last thing she would have expected was for Naruto to see that as encouragement. 

With so many kids in their class, _her_ reaction was what set the stage for Naruto to bait Sasuke. 

Naruto's smile was so wide his cheeks could split as he looked at her and said in a sing song voice, "Say, _Sassss-kaaaay_ why don't you draw some boobs."

"Naruto! What's your problem?!" Ino was the first one to speak up and suddenly nearly all the girls were yelling at Naruto as he confidently hopped off the chair he had used to stand on and walked to Sasuke's desk. 

"Dare ya!"

"Sasuke-kun wouldn't do that!" Sakura quickly covered her mouth when yelling that and Naruto's blue eyes widened. Luckily Ino's loud mouth saved her. 

"Yeah! Sasuke-kun is _refined_! Unlike _you_!" Ino snapped and Naruto only gave her a bored look. 

"Yeah, yeah refined, fancy, whatever," dismissing Ino his grin returned as he looked down at the boy that still hadn't acknowledged his presence. 

"Sooo, _Sass-kay_. You gonna do it?"

"Go away, I have no interest in your stupid games," Sasuke's reply was cold but that didn't deter Naruto in the slightest. 

Slapping his hand loudly on Sasuke's desk, Naruto glared at him in challenge. 

"You won't do it because you're a _coward_ that probably hasn't seen tits before! That's why your hair looks like a _chicken butt_!"

Sasuke stayed silent despite the insult. 

"Come to think of it, his hair does kinda look like a chicken butt...," another boy named Kiba said to Shino sitting beside him. 

That was probably all the encouragement Sasuke needed. Standing up abruptly from his seat he yanked the offered chalk from a stunned Naruto's grasp. It was clear from the shock on the blond boy's face that he hadn't expected Sasuke to ever do it despite his baiting. 

"Oh no...," Sakura heard some girl moan in despair as the object of the affection for many other girls watched as Sasuke angrily moved the chair Naruto had used to lift himself up to the other side of the chalkboard. 

The classroom was silent enough to hear a pin drop when Sasuke gracefully drew two almost perfectly round circles with middle points. Even Chouji had stopped chewing to watch the quiet anti social boy commit a 'crime'. 

"Are those really boobs!?" Chouji managed to queak out. 

That was how Iruka found them. With Sasuke still standing on a chair with the incriminating chalk still in his hand and a gaping Naruto staring up at his back, there had been no room for excuses. 

They were both taken to the office but after that day a sort of tentative friendship had formed between the two boys. It was more like a rivalry. Naruto would bait him until Sasuke gave in or sometimes it'd be Sasuke baiting him himself with something Naruto wouldn't normally do. 

 _"Can't believe that boring teme challenged me to get an A in math. I_ hate _math!_ " It had been amusing to see Naruto fuming in the library with a calculator and a bunch of books open on the table he was sitting at. The poor librarian had looked beside himself seeing the school's most destructive kid in the pristine library for the first time on the job. The terrified man probably had falsely believed he was 'safe' from the chaos that was Naruto. 

Unfortunately whatever progress Sasuke made in socializing with other kids that weren't Naruto was put to a halt some weeks later. Sakura couldn't believe it when she had first heard of it. 

The Uchiha Massacre had happened. 

*****

_Sakura, age 9_

The first time she'd heard of it had been on the news. She had been in her room with Ino doing homework and out of habit Ino had turned on the TV because she couldn't stand long silences even while doing school assignments on the bedroom's floor.  

Sakura wouldn't have known if she hadn't heard the name Uchiha being mentioned from the newsman. The juice she had been absentmindedly taking a sip from had been spewed all over her schoolwork as Ino yelped when the words 'massacre' and 'Uchiha' had been said. 

"What in the-?! Sakura, c'mon! I know you're not _that_ clumsy!"

"Quiet, Ino!" quickly grabbing the remote on the floor next to her, Sakura turned up the volume of the TV. Her friend finally understood why she was nearly frantic to hear when the newscaster was shown standing in front of the Uchiha mansion. It was already dark outside and Sakura could see the movement of police and paramedics behind the reporter. 

"Sasuke-kun...?" Ino sat close to her to watch the screen with as much as attention as Sakura. 

"We're here live in front of the Uchiha property after a terrible tragedy was reported...,"

Sakura's heart twisted. She knew that was where Sasuke lived. She recognized the traditional buildings covered in the darkness of the night and the opened gates leading up to the mansion. Ino had practically waved the pictures of the place from a magazine in her face when she had first learned who Sasuke was.

"An unknown assailant, suspected to be an _actual member_ of the Uchiha family, has created a macabre scene of carnage within these very walls," the newsman grimly stated pointing at the shadowed mansion behind him. 

 _I can't believe this! Another... Another one like my parents?!,_ the reality made her recall what had happened to her years earlier. Clenching a hand to her chest, she was only half aware that Ino had grabbed her hand to give her a reassuring squeeze, probably knowing what Sakura was remembering. 

"Only one survivor of the terrible tragedy has been recovered from within the mansion. Paramedics and police refuse to give further details but we suspect it is a child..."

A man with wildly spiked white hair walked close to the newsman and the newsman tried to stop him for questioning but the masked man wearing a black FBI armband curtly told him a "no" before going to the already crowded mansion. 

Quickly hiding a look of defeat, the newsman returned his gaze to the camera, "We will come to you with more news-" he paused in surprise, pressing fingers to his left ear.

Widening his eyes, he straightened and put back his professional face back in place. 

"We've just gotten news that the lone survivor of this horrendous tragedy was Uchiha Sasuke. The nine year old son of Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto."

"Oh gods! Mom, dad!" Ino's hollering for her parents made Sakura flinch. She knew why she did it. While Noriko and Inoichi owned a flower shop, Inoichi was high school friends with Shikaku, Shikamaru's father in the police. Considering how small Konoha was and the grand scale of the massacre, it was highly likely he was there at the scene. 

"It is a most unfortunate event for this to happen in just a little more than three years after the shockingly terrifying Haruno Slaying that shocked the peaceful town of Konoha," Sakura's heart nearly stopped as her fingers quickly clicked on the remote to turn off the TV. 

Both crimes were being compared to each other. That fact alone had made Sakura regress back into herself because the shock from that day had returned. It came back to haunt her when her mind had been trying to protect her from it in that 'unhealthy' manner her therapist was concerned about. 

Ino had admitted to Sakura that she had thrashed and sobbed more in her sleep the next morning than she usually did. 

She later learned more shocking details as the days went by. Not from the Yamanaka couple but from other students in school. Ino's parents refused to give them details although Inoichi had soothed them by informing them that their classmate was fine at the hospital with no severe physical injuries. 

Sasuke's older brother Itachi was the prime suspect of the massacre. When the news had spread there had been disbelief since he was only a teenager. But regardless of his young age, the news didn't change as a warrant was placed on the head of the young teen who had gone missing after allegedly killing his entire family and leaving only Sasuke alive. 

Uchiha Itachi was a child prodigy. Specifically with the katana. He had even won awards for his prowess when using the sword. He was reputed to be fast and be able to slice at quickly moving objects as shown on videos of the competitions he had taken part in. The skill he had and the manner of weapon used in the massacre left no doubts in the public's opinion. There were no other fingerprints left inside the mansion that weren't Uchiha. 

He had even blatantly left the bloodied weapon for the police to find without wiping off his own fingerprints. It was as if he _wanted_ the world to know it was him. 

Questions of _why_ and _how_ a child would do this circulated wildly among Konoha citizens. How could a child be so cold blooded? Why did he only leave his younger brother alive? The uncertainty and the shock of it kept their town abuzz with the news on the daily basis. Considering the wealth and importance of the Uchiha family, the news had probably spread nationwide. Uchiha Pharmaceuticals was one of the big two companies for research and medicinal production in the country. 

Sasuke didn't return to school for two weeks. His desk remained empty and even Naruto who was usually being noisy would look at the empty seat as if expecting the other boy to suddenly materialize. His absence seemed to have zapped out the endless energy Naruto seemingly had. 

Sakura didn't know if Sasuke had been wounded by his brother. There was no news other than him being in the hospital under heavy guard that even reporters couldn't get through. 

It was _two_ weeks. Surely that was too long for someone unharmed to stay in a hospital, right?

When Sasuke had finally returned to school, the whole classroom had fallen quickly silent. Sakura quietly sympathized with how pale and expressionless he stood in the doorway of their classroom. She knew what it was like to be at the receiving end of all the stares. 

Iruka had one of those stiff 'adult' smiles Sakura had grown to hate, the fake little smile that looked pained and remorseful, "Sasuke-"

"Teme! Welcome back to this hellhole class!"

"Naruto, if you don't stop it this very instant!" when Iruka turned his attention away from him in the doorway, Sasuke quietly went to his seat, taking advantage of the distraction Naruto had caused.

If it had been bad for Sakura, it was perhaps even worse for Sasuke. He was well known not only in Konoha but in their country, so every channel mentioned without fail the news about the massacre. Kids gave him a wide berth and if any of them spoke to him they spoke softly. Sakura often overheard condolences told to him regularly.

Sakura was getting frustrated seeing them _treating_ him like that. Didn't they notice how much paler he had gotten since returning to school? How his thin shoulders would stiffen with every "I'm sorry"?

She wanted to yell at them to let him _breathe_. Sympathy can sometimes be _choking_ for a person! They of course wouldn't know that if they were in his place! Receiving pitying looks all the time, the whispers, being treated as only _part_ human!

Naruto was the only one brave enough to approach him and treat him normally. Even though she didn't see Sasuke give much of a reaction to his presence, it was obvious that he let the blonde stay with him.

In spite of all her inner raging, Sakura didn't know how to approach the boy herself. She hadn't ever talked to him before even when being in the same class. It was stupid that she hadn't ever gotten the guts to speak to him and that _now_ was the first time she really wanted to . To no longer see him just across the classroom and have an occasional meeting of eyes.

She felt she _needed_ to talk to him. To show him he wasn't alone.

Three weeks after the massacre, Sakura had determinedly sought out Sasuke. She knew the risks of approaching him. He had shut even _Ino_ down when she had tried to approach him.

_But today is the day!_

Holding her backpack strap tightly to her shoulder she went to their school library. Ino, being good in keeping track of information, had once told her he usually went there for recess. She should have known that the reason Naruto wasn't causing a disaster in the school's cafeteria was because he was accompanying the boy himself there.

She found them sitting in the back. It was odd to see Naruto glaring at a book as if it were in a foreign language, actually _behaving_ himself, but Sakura paid him no mind. Her attention was focused on Sasuke that quietly regarded her from beside the painfully concentrating blonde. His cool look almost deflated her earlier bravery. For all she knew he'd tell her off like he told off Ino.

"Sasuke-kun, I-"

"If you came here to feel sorry for me, don't," the sharpness with which his spoke without blinking or looking away from her had her paling.

_Okay... He's definitely more mean about it than me._

"I didn't come here to feel sorry for you," his eyes slowly blinked when she admitted it.

"Sakura-chan...," Naruto started but trailed off. He understood. He had been one of the first kids that had treated her normally. His book fell loudly from his hands but instead of landing safely on the table, it fell on the floor underneath it. Somewhere in the library a male librarian whimpered at the incriminating sound. 

"I know what its like. Them looking at you differently. Treating you like you're weird... And even though I'm sorry for what's happened to you, I wanted to tell you...," her voice faltered and her eyes suspiciously stung as Sasuke didn't speak.

Why was she telling this to _him_? They were classmates but still literal strangers and yet there she was telling him things she didn't even want to tell her own therapist during weekly visits. Even the tears she almost couldn't physically shed while awake were threatening to come out then in front of him and Naruto.

"Nevermind. Sorry to have bothered you, guys," sucking in a shuddering breath, she moved to turn around and leave the two boys. She felt stupid to have come, not because of Sasuke's silence but because of how much of herself she had shown to him. She hadn't even told Ino how much all the attention and forced exaggerated compassion had frustrated her after what had happened to her parents. Her coming there was just to tell Sasuke that she could understand it.

"Haruno Sakura," hearing her name spoken softly, Sakura's breathing stopped for a split second.

_He acts like he knows no one other than Naruto, but he knows my name._

Turning around she looked at the once again quiet boy who had uttered her name. His eyes no longer held the fierceness of before and even though his expression was guarded, the look he gave her said more that enough to her.

That he was sorry too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Ino's mom the name of Noriko cos why not? Its the name of her JP VA and since she's the adoptive mama of Sakura she needed a name. If you hadn't noticed the Yamanakas will play an important role in this story themselves, so you'll see plenty of them. 
> 
> Yeah, Itachi still slaughtered the clan even in this modern AU. I've planned the Uchiha clan as a modern yet traditional Japanese family and him prodigious with the katana. It'll be a long time before its known exactly why he did these things.
> 
> Ino and Sakura will eventually develop a friendly rivalry, tho it won't be like the manga exactly. It will be more like a joke rivalry. 
> 
> PS: there's a third minor pairing in this fic that won't get as much focus. Y'all can easily guess in later chapters which pairing it is. ＼(☆o☆)／
> 
> Please leave a kudos and/or review if you liked. Sorry if I have anon reviews off but some entitled assholes say stupid shit and I ain't in the mood for their cowardice to not say it signed in.
> 
> And oh, I changed the age of the characters to one year up cos of reasons.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trauma, some symptoms of PTSD, some blood, this is Sasuke's POV and the kid has it bad. Has tons of Naruto's big mouth and Sakura being a friend (a sneaky one), Sasuke's first thoughts on Sakura, (And him developing a crush and NOT even knowing it) there's also some details about the Harunos that Sakura doesn't yet know since grown ups keep shit from her. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

_Sasuke, age 9_

His eyes opened widely with terror as his heart pounded so fiercely he thought it would leap out of his chest. Staring up at the dark ceiling above him, Sasuke panted still feeling the horror from the recurring nightmare he'd been having for weeks. 

It was something he had already lived through but seemed to follow him every night in his dreams. Every night there would be something different in his hellish dreams. Those new details could have been something he had missed from that night or something his young mind had made up to not make said dreams too repetitive to lose its terrifying effect on him. 

No matter how much he dreamt it, he knew the outcome would still be the same. In the end of every nightmare, he'd still run crying and slipping on quickly cooling blood in the hallway just outside his parents' bedroom. The blood hadn't hardened and dried yet because it still had been so nauseatingly freshly spilled. 

He would again cry on that floor, trembling and unable to move as his teary eyes looked at one of the bodies of his fallen family members. It had been one of his cousins named Kenshi, that had probably rushed to the room of his parents to warn about the attack. Sasuke could see the blood he had slipped on was from him. The trail of blood still flowing from that cousin was pooling darkly in the middle of the hall and Sasuke had been _bathed_ in it. 

The gun in Kenshi's hand had still been clutched. He probably hadn't had enough time to fire it at his attacker before having been impaled by a sword in his back and discarded there on the floor to flood the hall with his own blood. Sasuke had only helplessly stared into that cousin's unseeing dark eyes staring back at him as he heard those damning unhurried footsteps leaving his parents' room and heading his way. 

Then his brother would appear again and again each time in these nightmares. It was always the same. Itachi would come to stand over Sasuke as he had sobbed loudly and would tap his cheek with the tip of his sword, the very same sword that still had the warm blood of his parents. 

_"So weak. That's all you can do. Lay on the floor crying."_

Sasuke hated to admit it but those cold words had stuck with him. He'd hear them every single time he awakened in his dark room alone. 

Yes, he was so stupidly weak. He had been useless when he'd first heard the gunshots. He should had listened to his mother. She had taught him in the past that if there ever was an emergency in the mansion that he was to hide wherever he could and to not make a sound until the police came. 

That night shouldn't have happened. He had been in his room when the gunshots had first rung out and his instinct had been to stupidly leave his room when he should have stayed like he was told before. 

He had walked out and had tried to find his brother. He couldn't believe it now, but he had wanted to make sure his _older brother_ was safe when he had heard those multiple gunshots followed by screams. 

Life as a child had him too ignorant of how quickly things could change. Yes, he had been aware of the dangers his family could face because of their wealth but never would have he imagined that the real danger could come from the inside of their very home. 

He had _seen_ Itachi doing it. There had been no room for doubts. When he had ran through the house, he had passed the windows of the central garden and had seen with his disbelieving eyes as his brother quickly moved and sliced through family members trying to stop him from going entering another area in the building. 

They were trying to keep him from taking the shortcut to their parents' room. Their parents had their room located down a long hallway that could be entered through two glass doors from the courtyard. The Uchiha mansion wasn't just a mansion, but a place built to house a large amount of people and their parents were in the very center of the building with their room easily accessible from an area many people walked through. 

The security was mostly looked over by other family members. His father didn't trust 'outsiders' to protect their kin. They lived as a clan. All close to each other but with their different roles in the large household and separate private wings in the building, strategically placed in a way that if an emergency ever rose they could either go to the courtyard in the center of the property to contact his father or outside of the property to protect its walls from anyone going in. 

Although large, the mansion was of a rather simple layout meant for practicality and _protection_ from the outside because his father refused to hire staff that weren't Uchiha to be inside the house. 

Who would have thought that their 'enemy' would have attacked from the inside of the very mansion itself?

_I was too late..._

This was something he berated himself with. Years later, he would be told that he couldn't have done anything to stop it. That he had been just a little boy. That he couldn't have faced off against his brother with no weapons while Itachi had a sword he expertly wielded as he moved so stealthily through the mansion that he seemed to dodge flying bullets aimed at him. 

But those words didn't help him feel better. Itachi had been just a boy himself when he had committed the massacre. 

When Sasuke had been found by the police they thought he had been wounded. He had been completely covered in blood and had a small scratch on his cheek that surprisingly didn't leave a scar as he had stared blankly ahead of him. They found him still in that pool of blood, on his stomach with his face stained and turned to look at that dead stare of his cousin Kenshi even though his eyes could no longer see him. 

Police suspected his brother had help and that he had possibly been wounded by some of the gunshots when leaving the mansion because of a trail of blood that had been found outside. He had heard the talk when put on a stretcher to be taken away although he wouldn't remember these details until weeks later when his mind had finally numbed itself enough to process what had happened.

Itachi had _help_ in doing this. Itachi was _wounded_ somewhere and yet hadn't been found. He could probably even be dead already. 

But that didn't stop Sasuke from wanting to find him at all. Dead or alive he _had_ to find him and his partner. He had to know why he had done it. 

The massacre had happened in a matter of minutes. Itachi had known all the hiding places and how the clan would operate under a threat. He had been a genius and every move he had done that night showed obvious plotting and a careful consideration with timing. The cops had been called when the attack first started happening. Itachi had known exactly how long it would take the police to get to the outskirts of Konoha at full speed in their cars with their noisy sirens. The way he had done things was with the intention of doing it all quickly and getting away with everyone dead.

Everyone but him. 

Sasuke was a smart child. A little too smart according to his tutors. That was perhaps one of the reasons why he had such a hard time making friends his age. His intelligence alienated him and made him come up with mature conclusions that went far beyond his years. Other children thought him strange or too distant. Like he was from another planet or a timeline in which children had to grow up too fast. 

He knew details of that night he shouldn't have known. Unfortunately the information he had didn't give him all the answers he needed to understand. If anything it only made more questions come to his mind. 

Why hadn't his father fought back? He knew Fugaku had been contacted by a clan member through a call. It was all part of the mansion's emergency protocol. And yet, his father hadn't left his room and had let Itachi cut him and his mother down. As if he had _accepted_ their execution. They probably hadn't even struggled or argued against what Itachi was doing. 

Why hadn't they done anything? Why had Itachi allowed _him_ to stay alive? Everyone else was gone, but Sasuke remained asking himself these questions and feeling like he had to do something. 

Forcing his breath to even out, Sasuke's heart finally slowed its beat even though that didn't stop his chest from aching as he continued staring up at his ceiling. He was doing a breathing exercise his therapist had taught him whenever he had one of his morning 'attacks' that would make his chest hurt and his heartbeat alarmingly speed. 

School was probably hours away from starting but every morning without fail, he would wake up two and sometimes three hours before his alarm was set to go off. He didn't know what he could do during all that time waiting for his chauffeur to come take him in that silent ride to school. There was no one to greet him when he woke up, or to remind him of things he might forget at the house when leaving. He wasn't one to watch much television or play video games, so all his mornings were silent with him doing only the required things he had to do to start off another day. 

He was completely alone in the apartment his father had bought and had never had used in the center or Konoha. His father had been a very closed off man that was distrustful of strangers. With no Uchiha to take Sasuke in, he was left on his own with what he had deemed as a 'phantom guardian'. 

Due to his father's distrust, his will had been clear on certain terms regarding his underaged children should anything happen. The will had been meticulously thought out in every detail that didn't allow loopholes for child services to seize Sasuke and put him in a home. 

He had a legal guardian. A lawyer to be more precise, that came to regularly check on him and would hand him a large sum of money that he would receive once a month until the age of 21, the age in which he would be old enough to take over the family business. Everything was being run by lawyers who had strict limitations and contracts with high penalties, including prison, should they do something that went against his best interests and financial stability. 

His 'guardian' lived in an apartment next to his. Sasuke didn't know much about him, only that he was tall, thin and wore rimless glasses and that his name was Shibata. They didn't live in the exact same apartment, barely even spoke to each other and hadn't met until the day after the massacre when Sasuke had awakened disoriented in a hospital bed. 

Child services had come to the hospital with plans of evaluating Sasuke's potential future living conditions and Shibata had handled matters while he had been in an induced sleep. The man was polite, impersonal and the kind of strictly professional 'outsider' that his father would allow into the Uchiha matters in case of an emergency like the one Sasuke was in. 

With no parents or distant relatives to raise him and a large fortune that could fall into the wrong hands. 

Fugaku had thought things thoroughly. Sasuke would have financial independence but with the necessary _legal appearances_ to not have any outsiders near the family money nor him. That included the state itself. 

Sometimes Sasuke wished child services _would_ really take him away. 

The silence in the large apartment he now lived in could almost be deafening at times. It was in one of the high floors of what was referred to in Konoha as 'The Onyx Tower', so high up, he couldn't hear the cars in the street. The walls and the tall glass windows were so thick he couldn't hear anything from the outside or from nearby apartments. It was like being in an isolated world 

He had everything he needed to live comfortably without any unnecessary people doing more than what was required. Someone bought groceries and prepared his meals and would clean up afterwards and then would promptly leave, someone else kept the apartment clean while he was in school even though he had never been a messy child and would be gone when he returned. Shibata would visit him after school to ask him in that coolly professional voice of his if Sasuke needed anything or if he was required to go to the school for a scheduled parent-teacher conference. In the mornings the chauffeur, a large man that looked more like a wrestler, would come to his apartment door to escort him to the car to head off to start another day. 

It was an almost daily routine with precise schedules and the exact _material_ things necessary for a child. He had everything that would keep the 'outsiders' from meddling except one. 

Love. 

He would rather bite his cheek off than admit to that out loud but he was still a child. A _lonely_ child that had lost everything. 

In his family he had only received affection from two people. His mother and his brother. He regretted all the times he had huffed in embarrassment every time his mother would grab him for a hug to give him a loud kiss on his cheek, or how he would try to duck from her every time she tried to tame the spiked hair on the back of his head. Sasuke realized now that him pretending to be a 'big boy' who didn't want affection had robbed him of something he would later lack so much of. 

He hadn't truly minded it all. He could still recall the times he'd gotten sick and his mother would be there with him. Despite all his complaining, he had enjoyed all the hugs, the concern. 

Sasuke didn't want to think of his brother during these lonely moments. _Itachi_ had been another one that hadn't shied from ruffling Sasuke's hair or carrying him on his back. Since there hadn't been many children around his exact age, Itachi, though older than him, had played with him. Usually hide and seek or with some action figures Sasuke had scattered on the floor of his room. When Sasuke got older, he'd give him books or would try to teach him how to wield a sword. 

Regardless of how childish the games were Itachi had never complained and would have a kind smile for him, and would actually _talk_ to him. Whenever his brother had free time from his studies and katana practicing, he would make time for Sasuke alone. 

How he had looked forward to those moments. 

Itachi was someone he had looked up to and even had wanted to be like someday. His older brother had been kind, polite and so intelligent that their own father treated him like an adult.  

Feeling his eyes burning in the dark with the memories, Sasuke's small body shuddered on his still new bed. His sleeping clothes were sticking to his thin frame with sweat as he rubbed furiously at his face because he wouldn't cry about it again. The rubbing over his eyes would surely leave his skin red but he didn't care. 

He wasn't going to cry about it. His tears had been too many on the night his brother had betrayed their family. Tears didn't solve anything and he wouldn't shed them anymore because the Itachi he had known had been a cruel lie. All the smiles, affection... How his brother had lain beside him while they had camped out in the protected gardens of the mansion on the night of his ninth birthday had all been an _act_. 

How could he ever have felt so _safe_ and _loved_ with Itachi?

His brother hadn't truly loved him. That truth had Sasuke's body shaking on the bed again. Curling himself on his side, he wrapped his arms around himself and tried to even his breathing to push that form of pain down. 

*****

School was torture. People would think it was normal for every child to think that but for Sasuke it had been terrible even _before_ the massacre. Having been taught by tutors in his own house and in a perfectly studious silence since he was four, hadn't prepared Sasuke for what was the nightmare called _school_. 

He had remembered sulking on his drive there the first day. Just puffing up his cheeks and crossing his arms in indignation that his routine had been changed by his father. He had thought that it was unfair that while Itachi still had tutors at home, Sasuke had to be taken out to such an unfamiliar place with so much noise and people known as _kids_. 

Years of being secluded had made Sasuke completely unaccustomed to other children his age. According to his mother, Mikoto, his father had been concerned about Sasuke being surrounded mostly by adults and his older brother. 

Apparently he was supposed to _learn_ how to be with his peers and he had _hated_ it that first day. Seeing so many kids his age staring at him all at once when he had first entered his new classroom had been like putting a fish out of water. Even with his cool external appearance, Sasuke had been uncomfortably tense during the introduction and had wanted to hurriedly find his seat so that awkwardness could have lessened. 

Unfortunately it hadn't lessened at all. During more than a year of going to that hell place called 'school' he hadn't made one single friend. It wasn't like he actually made an effort to do it or had wanted to. He only went there until his father gave up on the idea and would take him back home to his tutors. 

The classwork was boring and simple. All his assignments had been things he already knew. The kids acted dumb. Girls giggled every couple of seconds, especially every time he was around and people would try to _talk_ to him. Why should he even had bothered? He didn't even know what to say every time they talked to him about something they considered 'normal kid stuff' that didn't have anything to do with class. 

That was his kind of logic until the loudest most obnoxious kid in class had practically made it his job to get Sasuke to talk. 

At first he had ignored the brat. It seemed like it was the customary thing to do with the likes of Uzumaki Naruto. 

Yet, it didn't work. The more he ignored the kid, the more loud he became and the more up in Sasuke's face he got. Naruto did everything in his bratty childish power to get Sasuke's attention in particular. 

However if anyone asked him now if he regretted letting the kid in, Sasuke wouldn't be able to say no. 

Their relationship was an unusual one. They were perfect opposites from each other. Sasuke was quiet, composed and Naruto appeared to be unable to sit still for more than five minutes and would speak so loudly that Sasuke wondered if he had swallowed a microphone. 

The blonde always smelled of spices and beef if you stood too close to him and he always wore something orange with his clothes. It wasn't a neutral orange, but a _loud_ orange that seemed to fit his personality. If he wore jeans, he'd have an orange shirt, if he wore all his clothes in more subdued colors, he'd have on bright orange sneakers or a headband. 

Their friendship began when they both had been taken to the principal's office after the chalkboard incident. When it had finally dawned on Sasuke that he was in trouble, he had felt his face, neck and even _ears_ go red while solemnly looking ahead of him with Naruto sitting beside him on the couch in the office's waiting area. 

"Hey, Sasuke-teme...?" hearing the almost shy question coming from the loud boy, Sasuke had looked at him in surprise he couldn't hide from his face. 

Naruto was just as red as him, his clear blue eyes wide when looking back at him. 

"How did you know what boobies look like?" the loud whisper from the boy had been laughable. As if he were asking the secrets of the universe. 

Sasuke hadn't known what to make of it. He had thought everyone knew what _those_ looked like. 

Crossing his arms, he had answered matter of factly, "Physical health books."

"Wait! Boring _study_ books have those?!" Naruto's near shout was what had made their principal cut whatever meeting he had short to see them in. 

From that day on, Naruto only got worse and Sasuke had no choice but to play along with most of his games. If he didn't, Naruto would riot until he did. 

Fugaku had been angry to have been called in by the school for what Sasuke had done with Naruto on the chalkboard but Mikoto had smoothed over it by saying that although what Sasuke had done wrong, he had finally made a _friend_. 

'Friend' had been a word he had never expected to hear but he supposed that was the only way he could label Naruto. Even though the boy irritated him and was nearly practically failing in school, Sasuke grew used to him and they seemed to get along despite their different personalities. 

The blonde would do most of the talking as Sasuke pretended to ignore him but still heard every little thing. He knew that Naruto was being raised by his godfather Jiraiya and that he was obsessed with ramen which he ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And that he had the most disgustingly open crush on a girl named 'Sakura-chan' in their class. 

He had known who Sakura was before Naruto had ever mentioned her in his long winded one-sided ramblings. Sasuke had easily noticed her the first day he had started school. Even when he had pretended to not notice her when Iruka had introduced him to the class. 

It wasn't just her unusual pink shoulder length hair or her bright clear green eyes that had made him aware of her. It had been how much calmer and apart from the rest of the kids she had seemed despite having kids sitting on either side of her in the back of the classroom. 

She hadn't joined in the girlish whispers when he had been introduced. She had just merely looked at him and for a moment, while Sasuke feigned not focusing on her, his heart had skipped a beat. He had felt relief when he had finally sat down so he wouldn't see her anymore with his seat in the front and hers in the back. 

And Naruto wouldn't stop talking about her and trying to get her to look at him while Sasuke listened. 

Sasuke wouldn't call himself shy. His mother had said he was when she had still been alive, but he never would have approached Sakura himself if it hadn't been for their pasts. 

After the massacre things had changed in a way that everything had seemed to squeeze him in and segregated him more from the other kids. If he hadn't wanted contact before he definitely hadn't wanted it now. Naruto, like always, forced himself through to be there with him while the other kids either avoided him or talked too much about what had happened. 

His loneliness was difficult to explain. Some days he wanted noise, something to remind him he was still alive while in others he just wanted silence to keep his mind completely blank and numbed. Keeping his mind blank when staring into nothing but one of the plain white walls of his apartment in a way helped him relax. Being alone could be soothing when it was too much for him while in others he wanted to scream and just tear the apartment apart. Just to break the big screened plasma TV he didn't even watch, to throw all the expensive glass plates from the kitchen cabinets, and just _destroy_ the silence altogether. 

It was when he was at school that it would all crash down on him again. Since he rarely went out at all, he rarely had to put up with the whispers yet he couldn't escape them through an ordinary day in school.  

Those loud giggling girls that already irritated him were now bold enough to talk to him. Kids that weren't from his class tried to go near him. Every teacher knew him by name and tried to pull him to the side to give him one of many condolences. He would have preferred it if _none_ of them had approached him at all because he could tell they did it more out of moral obligation than out of genuine sympathy. 

It had been like that since after he had left the hospital. He had been told that he had a mental breakdown and that his heart had sped up while in the hospital in such a way that they had to keep him sedated and do studies to see if he had a heart condition. Sasuke knew he didn't have a heart condition but after the events that night it was a natural reaction brought on by heavy emotional distress. 

His heart had been beating so fast as he had laid on that puddle of blood that night. Thinking about it now, Sasuke had briefly wanted his heart to explode and kill him instantly since his brother hadn't finished the job. This was a thought that sometimes terrified him because even though he was grieving the loss, he still feared the unknown of what was truly death. 

Due to his long hospital stay he hadn't even been able to attend his own family's group funeral. The Uchihas had a large family plot and were all buried there in the same day in a televized ceremony that had Sasuke cringing from his hospital bed at how much the media was feeding on what had happened. He was only able to visit the dark stone edifice that stood apart from the rest of the cemetery the day before starting school again when the reporters no longer crowded the group grave for a picture. 

He had been left alone by his chauffeur that had been respectful and thoughtful enough to bring him there and had stepped back to allow him his space. 

That destructive urge to _break_ something had come up again when seeing the names of his family members all listed in a metal plaque adorning the large elegant metal doors to enter inside. He had wanted to _smash_ it because it didn't seem real to him. It was all still so new and _fake_ to him. 

But he held himself looking at the names dully, his violent thoughts being barely kept within him as he forced himself to calmly breathe. 

Sasuke would be lying if he said he needed no one. Voicing that need would have been humiliating for him. Everyone in his school had _someone_ to go home to while he only had an employee that served as a guardian only on paper that kept things strictly professional. 

He envied seeing the other kids being picked up from school by their families. Sure he had always had a chauffeur pick him up even when his parents had been alive but seeing the other kids with their families had been unbearable. 

Even Naruto had his equally loud mouthed godfather or 'uncle' Jiraiya to pick him up. The noisy always laughing girls he ignored from his class would get hugged by their mothers before being taken inside their old cars to be driven home. 

They _had_ people there for them while he had nothing. Not even a distant family relative. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd gotten so much as a hug or a pat on the head. 

Didn't they all realize just how _lucky_ they all were?

*****

He remembered first hearing about the Haruno Slaying when in the hospital. The Uchiha Massacre would be mentioned and then he'd hear about the Haruno case said in passing in the ever flowing news coming from the TV in his hospital room. When he had been protected by his family's mansion, he hadn't heard any news about that case before and he hadn't asked about anything regarding Sakura in school. 

He hadn't even known that Sakura had been the daughter of the murdered couple but when he started thinking things through he should had seen the signs. 

There were small details he had noticed about Sakura even without once speaking to her. That she would smile a brittle smile that seemed shaky, and would speak lowly to most other kids but was only comfortable with three other children in their class. She would yell at Naruto on some occasions though he hadn't found that odd at the time because _everyone_ had to yell at Naruto at least once. 

And she had people to pick her up from school. Sometimes it'd be a tall man with his long blond hair pulled up in a high ponytail or an elegant brown haired woman. They would greet her and the blond girl named Ino with an awaiting dark purple minivan. He later found out they were the Yamanakas and they were parents of Ino. They were the legal guardians of Sakura and were raising her along with their daughter that happened to be her best friend. 

She had lost her parents three years and two months before his family had been slaughtered. After knowing about it, he had discreetly asked Naruto who had for once in all the time knowing him, become eerily serious when the subject was brought up. 

Naruto's godfather was a degenerate old man but with connections. He had been a teacher before he had become a novelist and one of his former students was a detective on the Haruno case. Although he wasn't supposed to speak confidential information, the detective trusted Jiraiya's judgment when it came to analysis. 

The night the detective had come over, Naruto had been unable to sleep and had headed off to the kitchen for a glass of milk when he heard the unnamed man talking to his uncle. 

He had overheard from the hallway leading to the living room that _Sakura_ had been the one to find her parents. The information he had listened in on and had kept to himself were details even the news hadn't gotten their hands on. 

With Naruto's mispronounced words and wincing through his whole tale, Sasuke got all the information he needed to know. 

He learned that the couple had been alone in their house while their only daughter was staying the night in her friend's house across the street. That whoever had done it had apparently stealthily snuck into the home and had waited up in the attic until night had fallen. No neighbors heard any noise because the couple had been killed by silencers in different locations within the house before having their dead bodies taken to their upstairs bedroom. 

They had been mutilated postmortem to be found the next morning. The details should have shocked Sasuke but after what he'd seen for himself in his own home he wasn't as disgusted as he should have been. In fact he felt _anger_ just hearing about it. It all seemed like a senseless murder. 

He wondered if Naruto even had understood what he had heard between his uncle and the detective. He had called postmortem 'postal modern', silencers 'chillencers' and mutilated 'curtilated', but with the pale face Naruto had when telling him all of this, Sasuke felt he didn't need to explain exactly what those words meant. Thanks to all his tutoring back home before being forced to go to school, Sasuke's vocabulary was more advanced than the other kids their age. Naruto often compared him to a 'boring old man' because of it. 

"Its such a shame though. Sakura-chan's folks looked like such nice people, ya know?" Naruto said after finishing the story and resting his chin on the palm of his hand while they sat in the mostly empty library. 

"Nobody deserves that and they were really nice people," the blonde had continued with his eyes looking distant ahead of him. "Her dad always said 'hi' to me whenever he came after school and he wore very cool clothes and her mom looked kinda scary from far away but when she smiled she looked very nice too. You could tell they really _loved_ Sakura-chan."

Sasuke quietly listened to Naruto speak. Not knowing what to say nor wanting to interrupt him. 

"I can tell Sakura-chan is really hurt losing them. She was very different before it happened. She was always smiling and joking. She talked with everyone back then. But after it happened...," Naruto's voice trailed off briefly before he finished, "she changed. She doesn't smile the same, she only talks to Ino-chan, Potato Boy and Lazy Ass now. I miss the old Sakura-chan who was always happy. I try to make her happy sometimes but she just gets mad at me most of the time."

Three days after that it had been Sakura who had sought him out to speak to him for the very first time in the library that was the only quiet place in their school. 

She had looked so frail standing there on the other side of the library table. He had finally gotten a better look at her that day now that she wasn't across a crowded classroom. Her hair was longer than when he had first started school. A pale and glossy pink that was down to her waist. Her face was pale and oval shaped with those light green eyes he had first found startling. 

Everything about Sakura was girly and almost too delicate. From her pastel green dress with cherry blossoms embroidered on its cloth in a shade of pink that matched her hair to her small hand that had gripped the backpack strap on her shoulder until her knuckles had looked too white. 

Her appearance was the exact opposite from her firm voice and the way she looked at him directly in his eyes. This wasn't some delicate girl that fit her looks. She was a _determined_ girl that wasn't giggling or avoiding his stare. 

The shock of having _her_ be the one to make that first step hadn't shown on his face. He had even forgotten Naruto was with him when she had first appeared. 

He _could_ have been nicer. Years later he would come to regret how he had tried to push her away even from that early on. 

When he had seen the strange mistiness of her green eyes after he had tried to quickly shut her out he had instantly felt guilt and had only been able to softly murmur her name as she had turned around to leave. 

His interest in Haruno Sakura, the _girl_ , and not the victim or fellow orphan, may have started then when she had looked at him after he had said her name. 

The smallest of smiles had briefly appeared on her lips. It wasn't the painfully feigned one he usually saw her giving her friends, but a quick smile that had her watery eyes light up with a warmth he hadn't expected her to have. 

Sakura was completely different when she _truly_ smiled and even at age nine, he finally understood why Naruto had wanted to see that smile again.

Just weeks after that Sasuke had begun to see a change in his classmates. It started out as minor changes. The gaggle of girls that always tried to talk him and he avoided at all costs had backed off. The kids that had whispered whenever he walked into their classroom had stopped as if almost too afraid of even speaking around him. 

Eventually their own teacher had stopped acting like Sasuke was a bomb that could detonate at any sudden move and treated him normally. The forced sympathy and the rude stares had been little by little fading until he felt a sense of needed normalcy again. 

He hadn't known what had changed things until a week after that when he had left the library during recess to go to the bathroom. Naruto had long gone to grab something to eat, saying he would come back. 

Sakura had been snappishly talking to someone out in the hall not far from the restrooms he had been going to. And she hadn't been alone, Naruto was with her having that sulky expression he usually had when he tried to be intimidating. 

They were talking to the gaggle of girls that had backed off. Sasuke had stayed still to listen in to what was being said. 

"... I don't know what your problem is, Haruno, but you and this _insect_ have been stopping us from going to see-"

"You guys just want to see Sasuke to gawk at him and try to get all sweet on him, ya bunch of kiss ups," Naruto said dryly, his hilarious 'intimidating' stare directed at the trio of girls. 

"I heard you girls talking about it ever since he came back," Sakura's voice was hard and Sasuke noted that what he guessed was the leader of the trio of girls, had paled over what Sakura said. 

"We were just joking. Our moms-"

"Your moms are cruel," Sakura's words cut the girl off and the girl stiffened and almost looked ashamed of whatever Sakura was accusing her of. 

"Listen, we would never want to hurt Sasuke-kun. We _truly_ feel bad about what happened-"

"Don't you dare lie about it! You wenches were saying how your moms told you guys to try to get close to him because of his money! _Oh poor sad rich boy is all alone! Maybe he needs a girlfriend!_ What are you trying to pull?!" Naruto suddenly snapped, his whole body trembling as both his fists clenched at his sides. 

The leader of the group gaped at the blond boy as if he had come from another planet. 

Sakura crossed her arms and glared at the still gaping girl. 

"If you and your friends don't back off, I'll tell Noriko-san who is one of the leaders of the Konoha Mothers Association, what _your_ moms have been saying."

"Wait, now, Haruno-san, aren't you being a little too harsh...?" one of the three girls asked meekly. 

" _You_ shut the hell up!" the sharp come back had Naruto gawking at Sakura and had the girl that had spoken visibly flinching. 

The silence after her snap seemed to stretch on forever until Naruto added into it.

"Yeah, shut the hell up and get bent, shitface!" now the trio and Sakura all stared at him in shocked unison. 

"What?! You cussed too, Sakura-chan!" looking clearly embarrassed, Naruto scratched the back of his head as the girls murmured to each other. 

"Let's just leave, they're _both_ losers," one loud whisper among the small group came out clearly and Naruto was ready for it. 

"Your _mama_ is the loser!" that was all that needed to be said to have the offended girls rush off. 

Sasuke blinked, not fully understanding what just had happened or why Sakura and Naruto had felt the need to do protect him from the girls when he could have very well told them off himself if they ever had managed to get too close to him. 

"Wow, Sakura-chan! I didn't known you cussed!"

"What you said was _way_ worse than me! I wouldn't ever _dream_ of saying that! If we're lucky they won't tell a teacher about what just came out of your mouth!" now it was Sakura's time to turn on Naruto and even from his place in the shadowy corner of the hallway, Sasuke noted she truly had an intimidating glare. 

"Well...," Naruto looked at loss for words. 

"Where did you learn such vocabulary anyway? Honestly. I think I'll have to _train_ you," frowning, Sakura closed her eyes while putting her hands on her hips. 

"Uncle Jiraiya doesn't think its bad. He thinks it builds up character. He helps me with my vocab- _voca stuff_."

"Ah!" Sakura threw her hands in the air in exasperation. 

"But you know something, Sakura-chan...," Naruto's lowered voice made Sakura look at him questioningly. 

"... I'm happy we've hung out like this to help out Sasuke. Nobody really listens to me so when you asked me to help out... I don't know... I was glad," the surprise on Sakura's face was evident before she gave one of her rare smiles. Sasuke's eyes had widened seeing it and from how Naruto had grinned, the other boy was clearly happy to get that reaction. 

"Yeah. You aren't so bad when you aren't annoying," the grin on Naruto's face quickly disappeared as if slapped off with her comment. 

"Hey!"

Sakura snorted softly and told the offended Naruto in a gentler tone, "I think you should go back to the library soon. You wouldn't want Sasuke-kun to know about this, right?"

"Oh, right!" when Naruto started running towards were Sasuke was standing, he hadn't had enough time to move. 

When his blond friend had found him standing there silently the ensuing awkwardness had been tangible. It was obvious from the exaggerated wince on Naruto's face that Sasuke had witnessed something both him and Sakura had been doing in the background. 

Naruto, who was probably the school's biggest blabber mouth, had managed to keep quiet on it for his sake and Sakura had apparently been the one who had planned it. 

He had barely known the girl back then. Had only watched her from far away and had only talked her that one time in the library, but in those moments she had somehow made him realize there were still people that _cared_. 

Naruto cared and so did she even when he hadn't been exactly nice to her the first time they had spoken. 

From that day forward, Sasuke had wanted to get closer to the girl. He would probably never tell her that out of embarrassment. He had wanted to be closer to people who actually cared and weren't there because he had money or because he was some sort of strange novelty due to the massacre. 

Sasuke had been a terribly lonely boy. This was one thing he could admit to himself. The feeling had been undeniable and he sometimes feared he couldn't hide it when seeing other kids carrying on with their lives without the kind of burden he had. 

Yet, even in his loneliness, at least _two_ people had found him. He hadn't looked for them because he hadn't known how but they had _found_ him and that was what he had needed during that time being.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If y'all haven't noticed, in chapter 2 I changed the ages. I made the Haruno Slaying happen when Sakura was six while the rest of the chapter showed three years after the event until it happened to Sasuke. That would make them officially nine when they started little by little talking to each other. 
> 
> Itachi wasn't the one behind the Haruno Slaying but both the Haruno and Uchiha incidents are connected (and Itachi really had a reason for doing what he did however its still fucked up that he did it)
> 
> This story will have the first chapters kinda laying out the first years of Sasuke and Sakura knowing each other until the timeline steadies itself when they reach age twelve and something BIG happens. Then you'll see them growing into adults. Yeah I know the first chapters are depressing but it'll eventually lighten up. I even gave a Sasuke a cuddle fetish (I'm so bad. He's pretty good in hiding it tho, but once he's older he'll be okay with it as long as its done privately. Sakura won't mind either. She's used to Ino comforting her since six. Besides that Sakura needs that kinda contact too)
> 
> PS: I might be unable to update ANY of my fics for two weeks cos a family member is coming to stay at my house. That's why I updated this.


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